If Sonic The Hedgehog Needs A Makeover, Then His Movie Needs A Date Change

As you probably know by now, the Internet reacted quite negatively to the first Sonic the Hedgehog trailer last Wednesday. And as you also probably know, near-unanimous disapproval of the lead character’s design (including, most notably, human teeth), led director Jeff Fowler to take to Twitter and state that the character design would actually be revamped in light of the criticisms. Even Yuki Naka (Sonic’s co-creator) weighed in, while the cinematographer of Detective Pikachu (whose character designs are dead-on from the source material) offered a thumbs down while again promoting the whole “Pokémon: Detective Pikachu was shot on film!” thing which has amusingly become an implicit part of the online marketing.

I’m not terribly thrilled that the online rabble affected post-production artistic decisions of a major motion picture. That said, even my kids thought Sonic looked ugly. And when you lose the kids (who, it should be noted, weren’t scared of The Polar Express and never cared a bit about Jar Jar Binks being anything other than funny), you may have lost the war. At the end of the day, general audiences will show up (or not) for a Sonic the Hedgehog movie only if they want to see a Sonic the Hedgehog movie. And if they think Sonic himself is unpleasant to look at for 95-115 minutes in a movie theater, then that’s the ballgame.

If you can spend the time/money to make the lead character look "better" without screwing over the rest of the movie, then I guess that's fine. However, fair or not, the angry nerd crowd is the same group of folks who thought Daniel Craig was too blond or ugly for 007, Heath Ledger was wrong to play The Joker, Michael Keaton would be a terrible Batman and felt that Shailene Woodley wasn't pretty enough to be Mary Jane Watson in Amazing Spider-Man 2. Obviously, being displeased with the visual redesign of an iconic video game character doesn’t put you in with that crowd, but reacting to the online harrumphs gives that demographic a major scalp.

Obviously, this isn't some deeply personal arthouse or indie passion project. If Paramount and friends want to spend the time and money to make Sonic look more like Sonic, so be it. However, it won’t automatically make the rest of the movie better. We also don’t want animators and special effects folks overworked (and possibly underpaid) to retrofit a major element of a major motion picture in order to make the November 8 release date. Conversely, presuming everyone is paid fairly, we don’t want a scenario where the revamps send the budget skyrocketing past the (alleged) $90 million price tag only for the movie to perform exactly as well as it would have absent the tinkering.

Fortunately, there is a solution to some of those worries. Delaying the theatrical release of Sonic the Hedgehog into early 2020 would be the easiest choice. It would allow the post-production work to take place at a reasonable pace which would ensure that the (arguably blameless) animators aren’t overworked and that the revamps aren’t entirely composed of overtime pay which shoots the budget (or the cost to the FX houses) ever north. It would also allow the film to get out of a rather crowded pre-Thanksgiving season into comparatively safer waters. Heck, there’s little reason for Paramount to open Terminator: Dark Fate (November 1) and Sonic the Hedgehog (November 8) within a week of each other.

Let’s make two presumptions. First, let’s presume Sonic the Hedgehog isn’t some kind of new-wave cinematic masterpiece. If it’s better than the first trailer (and less of a “Sonic runs around small-town sets and dirt roads” adventure), then great. Conversely, let’s presume that Paramount’s other 2019 flicks are well-received and perform well enough. If Rocketman is a big adult-skewing summer hit, if Crawl is a mid-summer horror sleeper and if Dora and the Lost City of Gold is also better than the first trailer, if Ang Lee’s Will Smith vs Will Smith thriller Gemini Man kicks butt and if Terminator: Dark Fate lives up to the hype, then Paramount will be sitting pretty in 2019.

If all/most of Paramount’s 2019 releases, especially Rocketman and Terminator: Dark Fate, click on a commercial level, then it won’t need Sonic the Hedgehog to close out the year. If those films are good, then it might be of value to delay a potentially underwhelming Sonic movie so that they can merely end 2019 by basking in the glow of the Tim Miller-directed/James Cameron-produced Terminator flick. At the very least, if the new Sonic design is going to take lots of time and money, better to delay the film rather than try to fix a crashing plane in mid-air. That was the lesson Warner Bros. learned with Justice League and have applied to Fantastic Beasts 3.

At the very least, moving Sonic the Hedgehog out of November would get it away from Terminator: Dark Fate, Sony’s Charlie’s Angels, Warner Bros.’ Doctor Sleep and Walt Disney’s Frozen II. Yes, Sonic will be the one kid-targeted biggie that isn’t a straight-up toon, but the Frozen sequel is probably going to make some variation of “all the money” when it opens two weeks later. Conversely, there is a case to be made that Sonic can take advantage alongside Frozen II of a mostly-empty-late-November-to-mid-December slate where it can gobble up kid viewership before Jumanji 3 on December 13. Again, if it can fix itself without breaking the bank, then a delay may not be necessary.

If it gets pushed, then go with March 27 (the old G.I. Joe 3 release date) or April, as the fourth month of next year is light save for James Bond 25 on April 8. I understand the inclination, in this specific case, to fix a large segment of the film (what the main character will look like), even if I can’t help but presume that discussions were in place about tinkering with Sonic’s design before the trailer hit. If audiences don’t want to look at Sonic, they won’t see Sonic the Hedgehog. And whatever my misgivings about the online protests yielding a real-world victory, they did seem to represent the majority in this case.

If they can fix Sonic cheaply and quickly, then go for it. But it won’t make a bad film into a good one, and Paramount doesn’t want a situation like Solo or Justice League where throwing piles of money at a film in order to radically rework it and hit a release date results in a film so expensive that a merely okay performance is a financial disaster (think The Wolfman). If it costs too much to fix it, don’t fix it. But if it can be fixed at a reasonable rate provided it gets delayed, then, by all means, delay the film. Paramount can bank on Terminator while still giving the fans what they want.